NASCAR, Sprint and the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) today jointly announced the racing series and mobile companies' participation in the DOE's Workplace Charging Challenge. The effort, which aims to increase the number of U.S. employers offering workplace charging stations for electric vehicles, includes NASCAR adding five charging stations at its Charlotte offices. The series will now have 20 such charging stations at facilities it owns. More than 55 employers are part of the Workplace Charging Challenge, including NASCAR sponsors 3M, Coca-Cola, Ford and GM.

This comes after NASCAR and the DOE in September began a partnership in support of various green energy initiatives. NASCAR Managing Dir of Green Innovation Mike Lynch said working with the Department allows the sanctioning body to "tap into the amazing resources" the DOE has developed and to help show how "applicable and viable" clean energy is. Lynch: "It's everything from helping us access research for new technologies or statistics and analytics to measure our own performance." Charging stations have been at NASCAR's Daytona facilities since July of last year, and Lynch noted that with execs such as NASCAR President Mike Helton and ISC Chair Lesa France Kennedy owning electric cars, the Daytona stations are "close to their full subscriber level."